Yossi Govrin - Artist

Last Wednesday I took a drive over to Santa Monica Art Studios to sneak a peak at the LA Mobile Arts Festival.  I had the pleasure of running into Yossi Govrin as he was placing his art work outside the door of his studio.  He took me inside and showed me a family of immense human statues adorn with chandeliers a sight of such whimsy and modern art my heart almost stopped beating.  He was kind enough to let me take his picture among his treasured work.  Thank you Yossi, it was an enormous pleasure for me. 

"Yossi Govrin has exhibited nationally and internationally, working in multiple media. In the "Night Watch" series the sculptures relate directly to "human conductivity" and are made from hemp and cement; emphasizing the transient nature of humans and their environment, and a single mold reflecting our common origin. The added elements such as chandeliers, stones, and rope reintroduce the sense of individuality and uniqueness and resonate across cultural and national boundaries. These themes are revisited in his other series of work, such as "Sky Dancers", and "Random Flight".

He has been awarded numerous commissions, among them a monument in honor of the late Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin (installed in Rabin Square, Tel Aviv City Hall, the site of the Prime Minster's assassination) and the bust of General James H. Doolittle, placed at the Santa Monica Museum of Aviation.

ARTIST STUDIOS/ ARENA 1

In 1985 Yossi Govrin conceived and designed his first art center, the Santa Monica Fine Art Studios, located at 1834 Franklin Street. It arose out of a personal need to obtain a work space with a sense of community that is inspiring, supportive, and dynamic. Thus the 10,000 sq.ft studio was created to include 35 artist studios, workshops/lectures as well as annual exhibitions.

Another dream in the making for many years, was that of an exhibition space devoted to cutting edge contemporary art, with an invitational curatorial program. A place to exhibit local and international artists, and to be a catalyst and educational tool for the center and for the art community in large. This became Arena 1, the gallery situated in the midst of the spacious artist studios. In 2003, Yossi Govrin was joined by Sherry Frumkin to create the new and exciting Santa Monica Art Studios, located in the heart of Santa Monica Airport."

Additional pictures from,  http://yossigovrin.com/

Text from,  http://www.santamonicaartstudios.com/yossi_bio.htm

Santa Monica Art Studios

3026 Airport Avenue

Santa Monica, CA 90405

Phone: 310.397.7449 Fax: 310.397.7459

Public Hours: Wednesday through Saturday 12 to 6

a poem

WOULD-LAND




5 AM. One-quarter past.
Distant chimes inform me this.

A bell peal knells the mist.
And sunlight’s

not yet bludgeoning.
But some light gets blood going.

Last night it was snowing
and now

every path’s a pall.
Though mine the only footfalls

at this hour of awe. Above
hangs a canopy of needle leaf.

Below, the season’s
mean deceit—

that everything stays
white and clean.

It doesn’t, of course,
but I wish it. My prayers

are green with this intent,
imploring winter wrens

to trill and begging scuttling bucks
come back.

There’s something that I lack.
A wryneck

bullet-beaks a branch.
His woodworm didn’t have a chance.

What I miss,
I’ve never had.

But I am not a ghost.
I am a guest.

And life is thirst,
at best.

So do not strike me, Heart.
I am, too, tinder.

I’m flammable
as birch bark, even damp.

Blue spruce, bee-eater—
be sweeter to me.

Let larksong shudder
to its January wheeze,

but gift these hands a happiness
just once.

It is half passed.
And I am cold.

Another peal has tolled.
I’ve told the sum of my appeals.

I need not watch for fox.
They do not congregate at dawn.

But I would,
were I one.

© 2011, Jill Alexander Essbaum
From: Poetry, Vol. 197, No. 4, January, 2011

.

Abigail Berenika

nothing feels right

to love a picture

"my feelings toward your picture are none of your business"

“i just love your picture, not you. perhaps you would ruin all of my dreams, so i dont want you as i only know your photo”

Thanks to Ozkan

there was this room of curiosities

LA Mobile Arts Festival 2012

well played

I think you're finally rid of me.

Took a village, didn't it though?

*

*

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This gorgeous image is by LiLiROZE

and the quote is by Poe.

“From childhood's hour I have not been. As others were, I have not seen. As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone.” ― Edgar Allan Poe

a scene from a movie I'm watching right now...

Blue in The Face on FLIX: 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. PST.

of dreams awakened o' lucky ones

"And in the midst of this wide quietness
A rosy sanctuary will I dress
With the wreathed trellis of a working brain,
With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,
With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign,
Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same:
And there shall be for thee all soft delight
That shadowy thought can win,
A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,
To let the warm Love in!" (lines 58–67) John Keats - Ode to Psyche



Photo by Herbert Bayer (April 5, 1900 – September 30, 1985)

the day was duller

Francesca Woodman (American, 1958-1981)

The Darker Sooner
BY CATHERINE WING
Then came the darker sooner,
came the later lower.
We were no longer a sweeter-here
happily-ever-after. We were after ever.
We were farther and further.
More was the word we used for harder.
Lost was our standard-bearer.
Our gods were fallen faster,
and fallen larger.
The day was duller, duller
was disaster. Our charge was error.
Instead of leader we had louder,
instead of lover, never. And over this river
broke the winter’s black weather.

Mobile Arts Festival

A gallery of images shot with the three-lens Olloclip iPhone accessory gives a taste of what's to come what organisers are saying is the world's largest 'mobile arts' festival. The L.A. Mobile Arts Festival begins this Saturday at the Santa Monica Art Studios in Los Angeles, California.

The nine-day event will encompass not just camera phone photography, but also video, sculptural and performance art related to mobile devices.

The event will showcase upwards of 600 individual works created by more than 240 artists from over 30 countries around the world. Submissions came not only by email, but in keeping with the newfangeled spirit, also via Twitter and Instagram.

“This is a celebration of this young medium,” said Nathaniel Park, co-founder of iPhoneArt.com, which organized the festival.

The work of Helen Breznik (Instagram handle helenbreznik) will be included in the L.A. Mobile Arts Festival, which starts this Saturday and will feature 600 mobile art images and video, sculptural and performance installations.

Further work will be showcased online once the festival is under way, beginning next week.
via dpreview.com

Mulholland Drive

Some time ago,  I spent a year conceptualizing this very simple photograph.

My feeling was to get a sensation for David Lynch for someone I thought might appreciated it most.

I went to the location of Mulholland Dr. several times and took endless shots and once with a model but in the end and a year later it was this one that I thought captured his spirit.

Although I don"t believe it was well received or thought of by whom it was intended,

 it is no less special to me.

“A kiss on the forehead”

BY MARINA TSVETAEVA
NEW VERSIONS FROM THE RUSSIAN BY ILYA KAMINSKY AND JEAN VALENTINE

"A kiss on the forehead—erases misery.
I kiss your forehead.
O
A kiss on the eyes—lifts sleeplessness.
I kiss your eyes.

A kiss on the lips—is a drink of water.


I kiss your lips.

A kiss on the forehead—erases memory."


1917

The Inventory of Goodbye

The Inventory Of Goodbye by Anne Sexton


I have a pack of letters,
I have a pack of memories.
I could cut out the eyes of both.
I could wear them like a patchwork apron.
I could stick them in the washer, the drier,
and maybe some of the pain would float off like dirt?
Perhaps down the disposal I could grind up the loss.
Besides -- what a bargain -- no expensive phone calls.
No lengthy trips on planes in the fog.
No manicky laughter or blessing from an odd-lot priest.
That priest is probably still floating on a fog pillow.
Blessing us. Blessing us.

Am I to bless the lost you,
sitting here with my clumsy soul?
Propaganda time is over.
I sit here on the spike of truth.
No one to hate except the slim fish of memory
that slides in and out of my brain.
No one to hate except the acute feel of my nightgown
brushing my body like a light that has gone out.
It recalls the kiss we invented, tongues like poems,
meeting, returning, inviting, causing a fever of need.
Laughter, maps, cassettes, touch singing its path -
all to be broken and laid away in a tight strongbox.
The monotonous dead clog me up and there is only
black done in black that oozes from the strongbox.
I must disembowel it and then set the heart, the legs,
of two who were one upon a large woodpile
and ignite, as I was once ignited, and let it whirl
into flame, reaching the sky
making it dangerous with its red.

Photograph by Sarah Moon

sorrows

Photograph by Dirk Braeckman

sorrows
BY LUCILLE CLIFTON
who would believe them winged
who would believe they could be

beautiful who would believe
they could fall so in love with mortals

that they would attach themselves
as scars attach and ride the skin


sometimes we hear them in our dreams
rattling their skulls clicking their bony fingers

envying our crackling hair
our spice filled flesh


they have heard me beseeching
as I whispered into my own

cupped hands enough not me again
enough but who can distinguish

one human voice
amid such choruses of desire

Survivor

Guiding in the Air Currents

Shining, piercing through, luxuriant as always
near the byways of permanence, flowing as always
above the sapient highway. In the sky, piercing through,
logical in the strange dimensions of materiality
here the metagyres in the cerulean, near the planar edge

M Courtney Soper